Blessed are the Meek

There's a commercial campaign for a line of cars that encourages us to "grab life by the horns." Of course it's for Dodge trucks. I can only assume they mean that if I buy a Dodge truck that's exactly what I'm doing. When I do, I will be a success. This is a common sentiment in our day and age. If I'm aggressive and take control of my own destiny, I will be considered a success.

I actually think there's a sense in which this is true. I know a lot of people who sit around and mope and feel sorry for themselves, feeling they are just the victim of circumstance. Passivity becomes their way of life. It's on this backdrop that I move on to the next line of the Sermon on the Mount..."blessed are the meek."

The word Matthew uses is praus, which means "gentle, enduring all things with an even temper, tender, free from haughty self-sufficiency, tender of spirit." When we read the definition, we could be convinced that Jesus is saying there is a virtue on being meek. I think this would be accurate as long as we make a distinction.

There are some people who are intentionally meek. For some, it's part of their personality. They're just quiet, humble, unassuming people who can take things in stride. This is the result of a quiet spirit that's confident of their place as a child of God. But for some, meekness is not necessarily a virtue. This is what I believe Jesus is referring to here.

For some people, praus (meekness) is a learned behavior. It's not that they learn something and decide to make a change for the better, it's more like a Pavlovian response to life. After people get beaten down for so long, they begin to feel like they're not worth anything. If a harsh husband tells a wife she's good for nothing for long enough, she begins to believe it. When circumstances keep working against a person they can be prone to believe God doesn't love them. When these things happen, confidence is eroded and some people hide. Those are the meek Jesus is refering to.

Of course, meek people don't take the initiative; they don't "grab life by the horns," and as a consequence, society leaves them behind. This was certainly prevalent in Jesus' day--society had a way of leaving people behind. But in the middle of this, Jesus says, "Good news to you who life as beaten down!" The Kingdom is good news to people whom society has left behind.

I think the interesting thing in this one comes in the next line: "for they will inherit the earth." First of all, it doesn't say, "you'll get yours in heaven." He says they will recieve the earth. Maybe their reward will come later, but Jesus doesn't talk about a strictly "spiritual" reward. Second, notice how they will "get" the earth. It's an inheritance.

While the bold and the brash seek to conquer the earth and take it by cunning, force and manipulation, the meek recieve it as an inheritance. This is the ultmate plot twist here. The people who are really seeking to be important, the ones who have the power, resources and cleverness to take over the world ultimately will end up with nothing. God owns it all and no matter how powerful or rich or manipulative anyone is they cannot have what God doesn't give them.

The sad reality is that too often in its history, the church has been the ones seeking to take the world by force. The crusades, the inquisition among other things are evidence that the church has not always been among the meek. We've sought power and reputation as the way to accomplish "God's will." But such efforts are detrimental to the Gospel. Think of the vast numbers of people who reject God or the church today for this very reason.

While it seems like the agressive always win in life, the greatness of the Kingdom is that some day order will be restored. There will be justice in the overall scheme of things.

In the meantime, we followers of Christ should work feverishly to proclaim the Kingdom is here now! We don't just wait for things to be restored in the end. We are salt and light now to proclaim the radical upside-down nature of the Kingdom. We work toward justice, not by power, but by identifying with the meek, knowing that one day, the earth will be ours.

When we trust in what Jesus says about the Kingdom, we can be free from the power games of society. Trust says "I believe and will commit to God's way of doing things," rather than "grabbing life by the horns."